News Release Number: STScI-2007-27

Hubble Images of Asteroids Help Astronomers Prepare for Spacecraft Visit

June 20, 2007: These Hubble Space Telescope images of Vesta and Ceres show two of the most
massive asteroids in the asteroid belt, a region between Mars and Jupiter. The images are
helping astronomers plan for the Dawn spacecraft'sREAD: Junior version of this articleLearn about this story in the Star Witness, a science newspaper available on our sister site, Amazing Space. tour of these hefty asteroids. On July 7,
NASA is scheduled to launch the spacecraft on a four-year journey to the asteroid belt.
Once there, Dawn will do some asteroid-hopping, going into orbit around Vesta in 2011 and
Ceres in 2015. Dawn will be the first spacecraft to orbit two targets. At least 100,000
asteroids inhabit the asteroid belt, a reservoir of leftover material from the formation of
our solar-system planets 4.6 billion years ago.